“Call me Paul.” Ruddle reached out a hand, which Abbie shook. She’d been amused to learn that the Ticonderoga Police Department used the title of “investigator” rather than “detective.”
“I’m Lieutenant Abbie Mills, and this is our consultant, Professor Ichabod Crane.”
After giving Abbie a firm handshake, Ruddle did the same with Crane. “A pleasure, Professor Crane. Where do you teach?”
“Oxford, though I’m on sabbatical at present in order to consult on Lieutenant Mills’s ongoing investigation.”
The older man gave a papery chuckle. “I like that—‘left-tenant.’ That’s so British.”
“This,” Ruddle said, “is Theodore Provoncha. He’s one of the docents of the fort.”
“Call me Teddy. So I’m told that you people think someone’s out to steal our Independence Cross.”
“I’d say it’s definite, Mr. Provoncha,” Abbie said.
Provoncha smiled. “Please, it’s Teddy.”
Abbie did not return the smile. “The point is, four other Independence Crosses have been stolen, with six murders as collateral damage.”
That got Provoncha’s face to fall. “Oh my goodness. That’s horrible.”
“We agree,” Abbie said. “That’s why we’d like to augment your security.”
“I don’t know about that.” Provoncha started walking toward the fort. “But let me show you around the place, and show you our security.”
“That would be great.”
As they approached the fort’s interior—which Abbie really hoped was heated, as it was about ten degrees colder up here than it was in Sleepy Hollow—Crane said, “Excuse me, Mr. Provoncha—”
“Please, it’s Teddy. You folks from downstate are too damn formal. I blame the city, myself.”
“Be that as it may—Teddy, I wonder if you can explain to me how you are permitted to refer to this monstrosity as a re-creation of Fort Carillon.”
“It’s actually Fort Ticonderoga,” Provoncha said. “Carillon was the French name. The British changed the name when they took it during the French and Indian War.”
“Yes, and after the Seven Years’ War—God knows how the other phrase came to be—the colonists continued to refer to it by the name given it by their allies, the French, rather than the name given it by the Crown, their enemies. Regardless, this looks nothing like the fort as it was during the revolution.”
“Well, it does have the same configuration—”
“Oh, bravo, you managed to re-create the fort’s largest distinguishing feature, but at the expense of verisimilitude anywhere else. It was not all stonework, for a start, the emplacements are misplaced, and—”
“Surprised you know so much about it,” Provoncha interrupted as they went through a passage to the interior courtyard. “What is it you teach at Oxford?”
“History,” Crane said tightly, “with an emphasis on the Revolutionary War period.”
“Surprised you call it that.” Provoncha smiled. “I always heard that you Brits referred to it as the colonial revolt or some such. Also surprised you teach it, since your side lost and all.”
They arrived in the courtyard, which Abbie thought was beautiful, but just seemed to annoy Crane more.
“The only ‘side’ I’m on, sir, is that of the truth. This courtyard was never this wide open, as it was used for storage.”
Provoncha stood right in the center of the open area, the early-morning sun casting long shadows from the fort’s walls. “You have to understand, Professor, they didn’t have cameras back in those days, so the Pell family, who did the reconstruction work back a hundred years ago, only had old drawings to go on. And—well, not to put too fine a point on it, but people weren’t as all-fired concerned with hundred percent accuracy back in those days. As for this courtyard, we like to keep it as an open space, ’cause this is where we have a lot of our workshops, not to mention our fife-and-drum corps.”
“Fife and drum?”
Bursting into a huge smile, Provoncha said, “Oh yes, they’re quite impressive. During the season, they come out and perform several times a day, and they’ve traveled the world. They played at the 1939 World’s Fair and the 1980 Winter Olympics. Just an amazing group, playing standards of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”
That brought Crane up short. Abbie couldn’t help but smile. And also shiver, as they were still outside. She was starting to understand why the fort was open to the public only in the warm-weather months.
“What standards might those be?”
Provoncha chuckled. “Tell you what, when this is over, I’ll give you a CD.”
“I look forward to hearing it. Still—”
“Still,” Abbie said quickly, “for now we’ve got bigger problems.” She gave Crane a look.
To his credit, he looked contrite. “Of course, Lieutenant.”
“Come on this way,” Provoncha said, leading the four of them the rest of the way across the courtyard and then slowly up a flight of steps. With his cane, Provoncha took them slowly, so Abbie waited at the bottom of the stairs.
Crane dogged Provoncha’s steps, asking what instruments the fife-and-drum corps played.
Ruddle shot Abbie a glance. “He always like that?”
“Not at all.” She smiled. “Sometimes he’s pedantic.”
Laughing, Ruddle said, “Uh huh. Consultants are always a pain in the ass, ain’t they?”
“Oh, he has his moments. I can honestly say I wouldn’t have survived the past few months without him.”
Once Provoncha and Crane got to the top of the stairs, Abbie and Ruddle followed suit. “Now then,” Provoncha said, unlocking the door to one of the galleries, “this is where we keep the mementos of the removal of the cannon from this fort to Boston for the Siege of Boston.”
Abbie winced. They had just gotten Crane off the subject.…
The room was decorated with fake wood on the walls that made the room look like it was trying to be a log cabin. There were display cases all over, painted with yellow trim, containing various items ranging from weapons to uniforms to jewelry to other decorative arts.
Crane found himself drawn to a weapons display, which included a flintlock musket and a flintlock pistol, both hanging in the open. Most of the exhibits were under glass, but the two weapons were simply hanging on hooks. Abbie hoped they were better secured when the museum was in season.
After staring at the pistol, and at the “Brown Bess” rifle, which had a bayonet attached to the top of the muzzle, Crane turned to Provoncha. “These are remarkably well preserved. Almost as if they haven’t changed in two and a half centuries.”
Abbie couldn’t help but notice the wistful tone in Crane’s voice when he uttered that last sentence.
“Well, to be honest, we’re pretty sure those two were never fired. They were donated by a wealthy local who found them in her attic. She suspects that one of her ancestors purchased or was issued the weapons and never had the chance to use them in combat. It’s hard to believe now, but these weapons marked the pinnacle of firearms technology in their day. They seem quaint and antiquated now, but being able to fire a musket ball from a distance changed the very face of combat.”
“Yes,” Crane said dryly, “I’m familiar with the intricacies of the weapons of the era.”
Provoncha shook his head. “Sorry, occupational hazard. I walk into this room, I go into tour-guide mode. Anyhow, the Independence Cross you wanted to know about is right over here.”
He led them to a display case. Abbie saw a portrait of Henry Knox, identifying him as the first-ever United States secretary of war. A placard described the removal of sixty pounds of cannon from Ticonderoga and bringing them to Boston, which Crane had mentioned in the car.
To Abbie’s relief, Crane didn’t carry on about any inaccuracies in the text. Instead, he stared at the cross. It was a simple piece of metal that looked just like the Red Cross logo, with each spoke of the cross of equal length. Abbie pointed and asked, “
What are the scratches on the side?” It was a deliberately obtuse question, since she knew from Al Whitcombe-Sears via Jenny that they were runes.
“Not sure.” Provoncha shrugged. “Prob’ly some kind of design the French silversmith preferred.”
“Excuse me?”
Abbie whirled around, her hand instinctively going for her weapon. She saw a woman in her late thirties or early forties standing in the same doorway they’d come in.
However, Provoncha’s face brightened, and Ruddle didn’t seem put out by the woman’s presence. Her status as friendly was confirmed by Provoncha’s words. “Oh, hello, Stacy!”
“What’re you doing here, Teddy? And Paul? What’s going on?” Stacy seemed genuinely confused.
“Sorry, Stacy, but these people are from Sleepy Hollow, and they’re looking into some thefts. Turns out the other medals like Henry Knox’s Independence Cross were stolen, and they’re worried that this one’ll be targeted next.”
“All the others are in New York, aren’t they? Or in D.C.?”
Crane spoke up. “Actually, they are all in New York or its environs at present, as the one from the District of Columbia was in a traveling exhibit. And that was one of the ones that was taken.”
“Yeah, but they’re all down in New York.” Stacy was oddly insistent.
Something felt off to Abbie. And then it hit her. “How’d you get here?”
Stacy blinked. “Excuse me?”
“There’s only one parking lot, and it’s got Teddy’s car in it, as well as Paul’s cruiser. Only way you could be surprised to see the two of them is if you came here some other way, or were already here before we all arrived. Unless you decided to take a stroll in twenty-degree weather.”
Provoncha turned to face Abbie. “Lieutenant Mills, what’re you getting at? Look, I get that you’re a police officer and naturally suspicious, but I know Stacy, and she’d never—” He cut himself off and suddenly stumbled forward. Abbie noticed that he was suddenly sweating. While the gallery wasn’t as cold as it was outside, it was still chilly enough that he shouldn’t have been sweating.
Ruddle stepped forward. “Teddy, you okay?”
“I—”
Then Provoncha started to burn. Smoke wisped off his clothes, and then a fire started somewhere under his maroon sweater. Abbie watched in horror and disgust as it spread quickly, until suddenly his entire body was enveloped in flame. He only had time for a brief attempt at a scream before he burned to ash. The fire died as quickly as it expanded, leaving only a pile of black ash on the floor.
Stacy shook her head. “I never liked that old fart. Or anybody else in this stupid podunk town.”
“Freeze.” Abbie whipped her Glock out and pointed it right at Stacy. After a one-second hesitation, Ruddle did so with his service weapon, which appeared to be a Smith & Wesson. He wasn’t holding it particularly steadily, but then he probably had much less experience with weird-ass deaths than Abbie had.
In fact, Abbie had had experience with this specific type of weird-ass death, not long after she first met Crane.
“Oh, please.” Stacy rolled her eyes. “Do you really expect that to stop me?”
“Let’s find out.” Abbie squeezed the trigger.
Suddenly, Abbie felt a huge burst of heat that made her stumble backward. She recovered after a second, but a sizzling sound made her look down. Liquid metal was warping and burning the hardwood floor.
Stacy was unharmed.
“I can melt the bullets the same way I combusted old Teddy. Or, of course, I can just make the gunpowder go off in the gun.”
Ruddle suddenly screamed and dropped his gun to the floor, shaking his hand up and down. “Damn, that got hot!”
Abbie heard the report of the weapon firing and then the pistol itself exploded. She threw her hands up to protect her face, and she felt something cut through her right arm. The pain wasn’t too bad, but it made it hard for her to maintain her grip on the Glock.
Ruddle was now kneeling on the ground, his kneecap a bloody mess.
“See, when you heat up the gun itself,” Stacy was saying in the same tone as your average tour guide, “and there’s one in the chamber? It goes off. Isn’t that right, Paul?”
“That’s quite enough of that.” That was Crane, who was now standing behind Stacy while holding the “Brown Bess” rifle.
Stacy turned to face Crane and laughed. “Seriously? First of all, even if that gun was loaded, I think we just established that it can’t hurt me. Secondly, that gun isn’t loaded, and hasn’t been since around the War of 1812. So what, exactly, do you think you’re gonna do with that thing?”
“This,” Crane said as he lunged forward and stabbed Stacy right in the chest with the rifle’s bayonet.
A very surprised Stacy collapsed to her knees. “Okay, didn’t see that coming,” she said in a weak voice.
Crane pulled the bayonet out, dropped the rifle, and moved to her side to guide her more gently to the floor on her back.
For her part, Abbie pulled out her cell phone and called 911.
Stacy laughed, but it was a gurgling, pathetic laugh, muffled as it was by all the blood in her mouth. “You really think you can stop us again, Witnesses?”
“You know who we are?” Crane asked.
“Course I do. Have ever since you stopped the mistress’s resurrection on the last blood moon.”
Abbie heard Stacy’s comment just as she hung up with the 911 dispatcher, and then clutched her injured right arm with her left hand. It would be about ten minutes until the ambulance arrived. Stacy and whoever else was involved with this must have been part of the coven of Serilda of Abaddon, the witch Moloch tried to resurrect the previous October.
“Of course,” Crane was saying, having obviously come to the same conclusion. “She killed Mr. Provoncha in the same manner that Serilda murdered poor Mr. Furth.” He looked down at Stacy. “But the security guards at the museums were killed in a far different manner.”
After coughing up some more blood, Stacy said, “We didn’t all follow the mistress’s path. And there are many kinds of magic to study.”
“So why do you need the crosses?” Abbie asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Stacy coughed up some more blood, then her body went limp in Crane’s arms.
“She’s gone.” Crane gently let her down onto the floor and stood up, her blood on his hands.
Abbie shook her head ruefully. “We’re gonna have a fun time explaining this one.”
“Don’t—don’t worry,” came a whispery voice from across the room.
Turning, Abbie saw that Ruddle was about to go into shock, though he had had the presence of mind to use his coat to apply pressure to the wound on his kneecap. “Paul, it’s okay, the bus is en route.”
Ruddle nodded. “I know, I—I heard you call ’em. Look, Abbie, we’ve gotta—gotta have a cover story. Say—say Stacy went crazy, set stuff on fire, shot me. Also—you gotta gimme the rifle.”
Frowning, Abbie asked, “Why?”
“So my—my prints’ll be on it.”
“Sir,” Crane said, “I cannot allow you to—”
“Yes, you can,” Ruddle said insistently. “No one’ll question it if it’s me.”
Abbie shook her head. “Yeah, but Crane’s prints will still be on it.”
Ruddle nodded. “Right, he—he took it from me when—when I started—started goin’ into shock. Look, everyone here knows—knows me. No one’ll doubt my word, ’specially after—after being shot.”
Abbie put a hand on Ruddle’s shoulder. “Thanks, Paul, we owe you one.”
“Yeah, well—alternative’s to say a witch burned Teddy to death and your foreign buddy killed her. Don’t think either’a those’d go—go over too good, y’know?” He managed a ragged smile, which Abbie returned.
She turned to Crane, who handed the “Brown Bess” over to Ruddle so he could get his fingerprints all over the stock. “We’ll give our statement, and then get ba
ck home.”
“After,” Crane added quickly with a glance at her arm, “you get yourself tended to by the local physicians.”
“Fine, after that we’ll head back ASAP. If Serilda’s coven’s still active and stealing George Washington’s magical medals, we gotta figure out why, and fast.”
TEN
SLEEPY HOLLOW
JANUARY 2014
CRANE THOUGHT THE day had gotten as bad as it could when he saw one of Serilda of Abaddon’s coven burn an innocent old man alive and cause a life-changing injury to a member of Ticonderoga’s constabulary.
He did not reckon with the slow, painful process of bureaucracy. First he had to report to the emergency medical technicians who treated Investigator Ruddle’s knee and Lieutenant Mills’s arm. The latter, he was relieved to learn, was minor and treated with relative ease.
Then there was the report to Ruddle’s fellow officers in the Ticonderoga Police Department, and then providing the same report to their supervisors, and again to a county prosecutor.
By nightfall, however, Crane and Mills were permitted to leave, and also told that they might be called back up to testify in a court of law, though the prosecutor who told them that also said it was unlikely. “It looks to me like it was clean.”
Once he and Mills got into the car, Crane said, “There are many adjectives I would use to describe what occurred this morning at the fort, Lieutenant. Clean would not be one of them.”
“Yeah.” Mills shook her head. “I also talked with the sergeant in charge, and he told me that they found all kinds of weird stuff in Stacy’s apartment. They’re thinking satanic cult.”
“They would be halfway correct.”
Mills started the vehicle’s motor and proceeded on the roads through Ticonderoga that would take them back to the highway that would lead them back to Sleepy Hollow. “Gotta give you credit, Crane, you kept nicely to the cover story. Wasn’t sure you’d be that good a liar.”
Crane sat up straight in the passenger seat. “Why would you think that?”
“Really?” Mills smiled. “The man who took months to remember not to tell total strangers that he fought in the Revolutionary War?”
Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution Page 10
